by
Daniel J. Dyke
As Blind as a Bat and Twice as Smart
If you have one of the Team Slot Celicas there is a feature that you may have missed. As I have noted in the past these cars come with an NC2 type motor called a Titan which is way too powerful for a home track when running no magnets. This motor can be replaced by an NC7, which seems to be an NC2 with a longer shaft, but probably few have a NC7 lurking in their parts bin besides me.
The other detuning option is of course to pull the motor and its bracket and replace it with a SCX motor which is a drop in replacement. As I was preparing to do this I noticed that at the front there was a slot under the front axle for a contrate gear. The car comes as a four wheel drive setup, but uses a belt drive to the front wheels. I immediately grabbed my SCX parts bin and popped out an old RX-81 which is the four wheel drive motor from their rally cars. It was slid into the Celica's chassis, the shaft was the right length, and the gears lined up perfectly. I then dug around for two 10 tooth pinions but alas the cupboard was bare. Why did I want these gears? The reason is that SCX motors have plenty of torque and not enough RPMs. Then two SlotIt orange gears were found which gave an 9/25 ratio (2.78:1) which is almost perfect for my track. I also found four of the SlotIt plastic wheels and four NSR Ultragrips for rally cars. The axles came next as the stock Team Slot axles are slightly larger than 3/32" and so two titanium axles were put in. Why Ti22 axles? I had them! Last order of business was to solderlead wires to the SCX motor's whisker pickups.
There is an old saying in racing from one of the Whittington brothers that fits. "Bolt the Son of a ***** together, it has got to do something." So I bolted and hot glued the critter together and now it is one sweet running car that makes no noise. If I need more power I can get a Turbo motor out. I have got one somewhere. I know I have. Where is it?
BTW, Bruce at Cincyslots still has the Celicas for $35 on his page for
small manufacturers. To find one look here
and scroll down. This conversion is known to work for the Celica
I own. If you have difficulties email me and I will try to talk you
through it.